I think ninjas would be good at pinball with their heightened reflexes and ninja intuition, don’t you? The Stern Pinball machine features some very nice Ninja Turtle artwork and this Walmart exclusive crate is full of Turtle goods featuring that art. These are hitting Walmarts now, so let’s take a look!
The outer crate features some of that beautiful pinball machine artwork on a sturdy cardboard box. I just really enjoy this art style. It has a 1987 animated feel, but it’s brighter and even more vibrant. It’s like the original cartoon turned up to 11.
Inside the crate is another vibrant box with a Shredder variant, a Krang-themed beanie, a T-Shirt, a key-chain, and a magnet.
The shirt has wonderful artwork straight from the pinball game’s playfield featuring a classic group of villains framed by the Technodrome. The beanie features the horrifically slobbery Krang art from the machine and is truly bizarre looking, while the key chain has a raised texture to it and a particularly sinister portrait of BeBop and Rocksteady. The dark horse winner of the non-figure items in the set for me is the pizza magnet. It comes pre-scored, so you can split the pizza up into slices which I found delightful.
The highlight of the crate for me is the figure, of course, but he comes in a pretty darn snazzy box too. I especially like the picture on the back with Shred-head striking a Dracula pose with his cape!
Shredder comes with three sets of hands (open, grip, and fist) that swap with a little force and stay on securely. Shredder looks to be mostly re-use of the original NECA Shredder, though this version is slightly shorter than my old SDCC box set version, he still looks appropriately taller than the Turtles. I especially like the way the cape hangs on this figure, it has a really nice fall to it and the weight feels right for the scale.
The ankles are a swivel/hinge with forward facing pin for rocker movement instead of the ball and socket of my SDCC Shredder, so while it looks the same there are some subtle improvements. I need to go and open my two-pack ’87 cartoon Shredder to see if he has the swivel/hinge ankles. If he does, I think I’ll swap him out with the SDCC version for my main Shredder figure. Shredder has:
- Ball and socket head
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Thigh, boot, waist, and bicep swivels
- Hinged toes
- Double hinged knees and biceps
I love the metallic paint job. It is interesting to see this figure I’m so familiar with in a different style. The shiny metallic paint on the armor is pretty fantastic and captures the way they illustrated Shredder’s armor on the pinball art really well. The purple metallic shirt threw me a bit, because I see a gray shirt on the art, but I dig the look and I like how the more vibrant costume looks the lighter green cartoon Turtles.
Thanks to NECA for sending this cool crate along!
